Interstellar Survival: Invasion

Chapter 272: Final Glimpse

"Yes, I believe that was him. He still has the ring Canyue took on his finger," said Old Du.

"Canyue, do you have the other ring or did Domo steal it?" asked Zhang Bao'er.

"It was in my backpack, but it went missing with Bulu," I said helplessly.

"If Dirk is here, then the others might also be imprisoned here. It had tried to capture us with its illusions in the past," said Old Du.

"Canyue, I think we need to leave quickly and look for Temo and Dodo," said Zhang Bao'er.

"Are we going to stop looking through history? If these are really the fragments of deleted records, this will be our only chance to look at them," I said, reluctant to part with these recordings.

"The theory that these are deleted recordings is mere speculation. Perhaps the complete recordings can be found in the core room. These might not be deleted fragments. They can very well be overflow backups," said Zhang Bao'er, displaying a rare moment of wisdom as he reminded me of a different possibility,

"Did any of you find the entrance to the ventilation duct?" I asked.

"I have a feeling that the entrance is right in front of us. This particle space has fooled all of us," said Zhang Bao'er, making yet another shocking theory.

"Why are you so sure?" asked Old Du.

"Do you still remember the scorched crystal plate we went through to get in here? I still remember that Little Forest had claimed that a large amount of energy is needed to strip black matter from space. Because of that, the crystal plate was scorched during the process," said Zhang Bao'er.

"Yes, I remember. It is true that a large amount of energy is required to strip black matter," said Old Du.

"How much energy would they need to strip a large space of dark matter? I believe the Sacred Wing who had designed this space wouldn't make it so big," said Zhang Bao'er, taking the chance to toss out his theory. At that moment, Zhang Bao'er looked so much wiser in my eyes.

One ought to admit that Zhang Bao'er's theory was reasonable. The particle space shouldn't be too big. Perhaps we had really been walking in circles.

"In that case, we should return to Anxashe and move together," suggested Old Du.

"Let's move in five minutes. I want to take another look at these memory fragments," I said, still reluctant to part with these pieces of history.

Sensing my reluctance, my two brothers agreed. I used the final five minutes to greedily go through the fragments in anticipation of learning more about Blue's ancient history. However, the final fragments I went through were all recordings of recent history from hundreds of years ago. Most of them recorded the construction of these artificial planets. Before long, I only had two minutes remaining. I randomly picked a fragment before moving the perspective toward Blue.

From high in the sky, I saw that the recording depicted a time period of 20th century Blue. Numerous busy transportation routes connecting Europe with the east could be seen. Following the dense railway system, when I arrived near Eurasia, I suddenly saw numerous fighters with designs from the 40s gliding in the sky.

Down in the ground, thick plumes of smoke, numerous tanks, vehicles, and soldiers could be seen crossing a large river with pontoon bridges. On the other side of the river, not a single intact building remained. An entire city seemed to have been reduced to rubble. Referring to my downloaded knowledge, I recognized the river: Dnieper River.

I instantly understood what I was looking at. This should be the year 1942 when the German army was attempting to cross the Dnieper River. A cruel battle known as the Battle of Stalingrad was about to unfold on the other side of the river.

"Canyue, it's time," Old Du's voice suddenly came, rousing me from my concentration on the recording.

This time, I did not end the recording. Rather, I directly turned and walked back toward Anxashe. In a few minutes, the four of us regrouped. After going through so many fragments of history, we all seemed to have grown even more mature, each of us exuding a sense of confidence.

"I think we shouldn't bother with any further search. Just release the dark matter here. I believe the ventilation duct we're looking for is close to our entry point," said Zhang Bao'er as he took out the bottle of dark matter.

We all agreed with his suggestion. After receiving my permission, Zhang Bao'er moved to open the bottle. The rest of us opened our eyes wide in preparation to look for the ventilation duct the moment the dark matter was released.

Zhang Bao'er slowly spun the cap open. From within the clearly transparent bottle, some blackish substance floated out. It was exceptionally eye-grabbing in the white environment around us.

"Dark matter," exclaimed Old Du.

The black substance blended into the white environment. We could see the air becoming clearer while our faces felt hotter and hotter.

"Put your helmet on immediately!" I shouted at Zhang Bao'er and Old Du.

The two immediately obeyed and put on their helmets and turned on their morph-capable suits.

"Canyue, the surrounding environment is slowly rising in temperature," said Anxashe. Unlike us, he had never taken his equipment off.

"Stay alert and be on the lookout for the entrance. We will only have one minute to leave the moment it shows itself," I reminded the team.

The white around us gradually faded, revealing the actual environment surrounding us. With one glance, I saw an entrance right in front of me with a cover above it. The wall around the entrance had reached a temperature of 1,000 degrees.

Our countdown of one minute had begun. I could see that our surroundings were starting to slowly fade into the previous whiteness yet again. I ran toward the entrance, the others close behind me. However, the wall's high temperature caused the alarm on my suit to blaze.

"The extinguisher can reduce the temperature," reminded Zhang Bao'er.

Both Old Du and I activated our extinguishers and aimed them at the cover. After about 15 minutes, my system indicated that the temperature had fallen to around 400 degrees. That was a temperature we could operate in.

Anxashe stepped forth and started removing the cover. However, the cover was as immovable as a mountain. There were about a dozen holes in the cover, and air was constantly flowing out of them. This single piece of steel had blocked our advance. Before we knew it, 30 minutes passed. Our surroundings were turning more and more blurry.

"Damn that Little Forest. Why hadn't he mentioned this cover at the entrance?" cursed Zhang Bao'er, who was starting to panic.

After a while, Anxashe suddenly placed a black object atop the cover. Then, he moved his morph-capable shield to cover all of us. We instantly realized what he was doing. A bright wall of light appeared before us, and we heard a loud rumble. The cover was blasted away by the explosion, and the entrance itself was deformed.

By then, we only had 15 seconds left. We did not have the time to say much, so I took the lead and rushed into the duct with the others behind me. Old Du was the last person to enter. As soon as he entered, the space outside the duct returned to its previous whiteness.

"Damn that Little Forest. I need to teach him a good lesson after this. He nearly caused my death here," complained Zhang Bao'er.

Suddenly, I sensed that the end of the duct was slowly returning to its previous high temperature. The heat of over 1,000 degrees was slowly spreading toward us.

"This is bad. The cover was made of special material that could block heat. Now that it has been destroyed, the entire duct will rise to over 1,000 degrees Celsius," I said.

"What? What should we do now?" asked Zhang Bao'er.

"What else? Run!" I replied and ran deep into the duct.

The duct was much longer than we had imagined. Fortunately, the heat spread relatively slowly. After five minutes of crawling through the duct, we finally reached the other end. A cover like the previous one was covering it. The moment he saw the cover, Zhang Bao'er rushed forth and grabbed Anxashe's hands.

"Brother, don't play with explosives this time. The heat will destroy everything inside," said Zhang Bao'er. He knew very well what he was doing.

Since we couldn't use explosives, we had to think of a way to quickly open the cover. I started studying it.

"Little Forest, Little Forest, can you hear us?" Old Du called out to the communicator. For some reason, we still couldn't contact the others even after leaving the particle space.

"Don't bother. Come study this cover with me. Let's think of a way to open it," I said.

Hearing my words, Old Du crawled forward and started studying the odd cover.

I had a feeling that the cover was fastened onto the duct when the duct itself had expanded.

"Looks like we need to temporarily shrink the duct to open the cover," said Old Du.

"But how should we? By manipulating the temperature?" I asked.

Old Du did not answer. Rather, he continued studying the cover.

"Canyue, look at the corner. There seems to be a fingerprint lock there," said Old Du.

I looked over and saw that at the lower right of the cover, there was an interface that looked like a fingerprint lock. Old Du tried giving it a push, but it did not react.

"There are no indicators on this lock. How do you know it's a fingerprint lock?" I asked.

"Faster, guys. The 1,000 degrees of heat is getting very close," Zhang Bao'er cried out.

I looked back and saw that the heat was now less than 10 meters away from us.